Diwata-1 outliving orbit life by months

MANILA, Philippines — The country’s first microsatellite, Diwata-1, is proving to be resilient, continuing to remain in orbit and providing satellite images to the ground stations of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).

Enrico Paringit, DOST Philippince Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development executive director, yesterday said Diwata-1 has been moving beyond its service life of 20 months since it was built and launched into orbit three years ago.

Paringit said with Diwata-1 starting to drift lower in its orbit, it was taking clearer satellite images.

“Actually, it’s sending us better images because it’s drifting closer to earth,” Paringit told The STAR.

“But once it encounters atmospheric disturbances, its functions will become unreliable,” he said.

Diwata-1, designed and built by Filipino engineers with the help of Japan’s Tohoku University and Hokkaido University and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, was launched into orbit on April 27, 2016.

Joel Joseph Marciano Jr., of DOST’s Advanced Science and Technology Institute, said based on simulations, Diwata-1 is expected to reach an unstable altitude of 300 kilometers by August this year.

Once it reaches this altitude, the microsatellite will experience a steep increase in temperature due to friction from the Earth’s atmosphere, a similar event when manned spacecraft return to Earth.

This increased temperature will cause the satellite’s critical components to overheat and eventually stop functioning.

Expected to function only for 1.5 years, Diwata-1 will reach three years in orbit and service this April.

Diwata-1 and Diwata-2, launched just last October, are providing satellite images to the DOST’s Philippine Earth Data Resources Observation Center ground stations.

The images are then archived and processed by the DOST’s Computing and Archiving Research Environment Facility, and then further processed and analyzed to useful geospatial data by the Remote Sensing and Data Science Help Desk or DATOS project, also of the DOST.

The DOST has been helping the Department of Environment and Natural Resources monitor the progress and chart next moves in its effort to clean up Manila Bay, through the satellite images taken by Diwata-1 and 2.